Over the past several years, Iranian leaders –
most prominently, Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad – have made numerous statements
calling for the destruction of Israel and the
Jewish people. While certain experts have
interpreted these statements to be simple
expressions of dissatisfaction with the current
Israeli government and its policies, in reality,
the intent behind Ahmadinejad’s language and that
of others is clear: the physical destruction of
the State of Israel. Senior Fellow Dr. Joshua
Teitelbaum analyzes the anti-Israel and
anti-Semitic statements of Iranian leaders in the
latest issue of theHoover Digest, published by
Stanford University’s Hoover Institution
<http://www.hoover.org>
Hoover Institution
[]
IRAN:A Threat in Any Language
By <http://www.hoover.org/bios/Joshua_Teitelbaum.html>Joshua Teitelbaum
The leader of Iran wants to “wipe Israel off the
map.” Was he misquoted? Not by a long shot. By Joshua Teitelbaum.
During the past several years, Iranian
leaders­most prominently President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad­have repeatedly called for the
destruction of Israel and the Jewish people.
Certain journalists and Iran experts interpret
some of these statements to be simple expressions
of dissatisfaction with the Israeli presence in
the West Bank or eastern Jerusalem or with the
current Israeli government and its policies.
“Ahmadinejad did not say he was going to wipe
Israel off the map, because no such idiom exists
in Persian,” insists Juan Cole of the University
of Michigan, who argues that Ahmadinejad was not
calling for the destruction of Israel. Jonathan
Steele writes in the Guardian that Ahmadinejad
was simply remarking that “this regime occupying
Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time. . .
. He was not making a military threat. He was
calling for an end to the occupation of Jerusalem
at some point in the future. The ‘page of time’
phrase suggests he did not expect it to happen soon.”
Scholars continue to soft-pedal the Iranian
president’s words. Professor Stephen Walt,
previously the academic dean of Harvard’s Kennedy
School of Government and coauthor of The Israel
Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy with Professor John
Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, told a
Jerusalem audience in early June 2008: “I don’t
think he is inciting to genocide.”
In reality, the intent behind Ahmadinejad’s
language is clear. Those who seek to excuse the
Iranian leader should be challenged when they use
the tools of scholarship to obfuscate these
extreme and deliberate statements. What emerges
from a comprehensive analysis of what Ahmadinejad
said­ and how it has been interpreted in Iran,
including by leading blogs and news outlets, some
official­is that the Iranian president was
calling not just for “regime change” in Jerusalem
but for the actual, physical destruction of the
state of Israel. Ahmadinejad’s language
constitutes a call for genocide, the destruction
of the Jewish state and its residents.
The Iranian government itself reinforces this
understanding with its own rendering of
Ahmadinejad’s slogans on posters and billboards
and during official parades. Moreover, examining
them in context demonstrates beyond a doubt that
when Iranian leaders use the euphemism “Zionist
regime” or “the Jerusalem-occupying regime,” they
are definitely referring to the state of Israel
and not to the present government. Iranian
leaders simply follow the timeworn practice in
the Arab world of referring to the “Zionist
regime” in an attempt to avoid dignifying Israel
by using its name. They are not talking about a
nondirected, natural historical process that will
end with Israel’s demise; rather, they are
actively advocating Israel’s destruction and have
made it clear that they have the will and the means to effect it.
THE “WIPE ISRAEL OFF THE MAP” SPEECH
In an address to the “World without Zionism”
conference held in Tehran on October 26, 2005, Ahmadinejad said:
Our dear Imam [Khomeini] ordered that this
Jerusalem-occupying regime [Israel] must be
erased from the page of time. This was a very
wise statement. (Va Imam-e aziz-e ma farmudand ke
in rezhim-e eshghalgar-e Qods bayad az safhe-ye
ruzegar mahv shaved. In jomle besyar hakimane ast.)
New York Times Tehran correspondent Nazila Fathi
translated the statement as Israel “must be wiped
off the map,” a nonliteral translation that
nevertheless conveys the meaning of the original: the destruction of Israel.
It cannot be credibly denied: the Iranian
president has persistently called not just for
“regime change” in Jerusalem but for the actual,
physical destruction of the state of Israel.
Soft-pedaling Ahmadinejad’s call for the
destruction of Israel, Cole told the Times that
all Ahmadinejad had said was that “he hoped its
regime, i.e., a Jewish-Zionist state occupying Jerusalem, would collapse.”
Official Iranian representatives and organs have
since based their slogans on Ahmadinejad’s
statement, loosely translating the statement as
“Israel should be wiped off the face of the
world.” This is evident in photographs of banners
and signs in parades and ceremonies. Even the
Iranian newscaster who introduced the report on
the “World without Zionism” conference used the
word “Israel” (instead of the
“Jerusalem-occupying regime”) and also the word
“world” (instead of the “page of time”),
rendering Ahmadinejad’s statement as “erasing
Israel, this disgraceful stain, from the world.”
Although Iranian leaders are well aware that they
are watched by the international media and
occasionally soften their statements accordingly,
they are less careful in internal forums and
events. But when Ahmadinejad punctuates his
speech before a large crowd with “Death to
Israel” (marg bar Esraiil ), this is no longer
open to various interpretations. He is openly
calling for the destruction of a country, not a regime.
DEHUMANIZATION BEFORE GENOCIDE: ISRAEL AS INFECTION
In the same speech of October 26, 2005,
Ahmadinejad returned to the theme of Israel as
dirty vermin that must be eradicated:
Soon this stain of disgrace will be cleaned from
the garment of the world of Islam, and this is
attainable. (Be-zudi in lake-ye nang ra az
damane-ye donya-ye Islam pak khahad kard, va in shodani’st.)
To remove any doubt in the mind of the Persian
reader that Ahmadinejad is referring to Israel,
the Iranian president’s official site
(www.president.ir) interpolates the word
“Esraiil” in its report on the speech to explain
the expression “stain of disgrace.”
A common motif of incitement to genocide is the
dehumanization of the target population. The Nazi
weekly Der Stürmer portrayed Jews as parasites
and locusts. In the early 1990s, Hutu propaganda
in Rwanda against the Tutsis described them as
cockroaches. Before Saddam Hussein attacked the
Iraqi Shiite population in 1991, his Baath Party
newspaper characterized them as “monkey-faced
people.” Similarly, Iran’s Ahmadinejad has called
Israeli Jews “cattle,” “bloodthirsty barbarians,” and “criminals.”
The theme of the Israeli as a germ or microbe is
a common one with the Iranian president. In his
speech before a crowd in Bandar Abbas on February
20, 2008, Ahmadinejad said: In the Middle East,
they [the global powers] have created a black and
filthy microbe called the Zionist regime, so they
could use it to attack the peoples of the region,
and by using this excuse, they want to advance
their schemes for the Middle East. (Dar
mantaqe-ye Khavar-e Miyane niz jarsum-e siyah va
kasifi be-nam-e rezhim-e sahyonisti dorost
karde-and ta be-jan-e mardom-e mantaqe biandazand
va be-behane-ye an siyasatha-ye khod-ra dar Khavar-e Miyane pish bebarand.)
On the occasion last year of the sixtieth
anniversary of Israel’s founding, Ahmadinejad
stated that “global arrogance established the
Zionist regime sixty years ago.” The Islamic
Republic News Agency reported that “President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday labeled the
Zionist regime as a ‘stinking corpse’ and said
those who think they can revive the corpse of
this fabricated and usurper regime are mistaken.”
According to Ahmadinejad, ridding the world of
the germ of Israel is possible and imminent. On
April 14, 2006, he insisted that Israel was
“heading towards annihilation.” He added that Israel was
a dried, rotten tree that will collapse with a
single storm. (Derakht-e khoshkide va puside’i
ast ke ba yek tufan dar ham khahad shekast.)
Referring to the United States (the “Great
Satan”) and Israel (the “Little Satan”),
Ahmadinejad said at a military parade on April 17, 2008:
The region and the world are prepared for great
changes and for being cleansed of satanic powers.
(Mantaqe- va jehan amade-ye tahavolat-e bozorg va
pak shodan az doshmanan-e ahrimani’st.)
Ahmadinejad was fully prepared to make his
assertions about Jews and Israel in the Western
press as well. In an interview that appeared in
the French daily Le Monde on February 5, 2008, he
said the Jews of Israel are “a people falsified;
invented, [the people of Israel] will not last;
they must leave the territory.” Again, this is
not a call for a change of government or new
policies. It is clear he believes that Israelis
will not endure and will not continue to stay on
the territory where they live. This is a call to
remove Israel’s Jewish population from the
country, either by ethnic cleansing or by physical destruction.
READING AHMADINEJAD IN TEHRAN
Although certain Western commentators seek to
whitewash Ahmadinejad’s statements on Israel,
pro- and anti-regime Iranians (and others in the
region) have no doubt that the Iranian president
has been referring to the destruction of Israel.
“Soon this stain of disgrace will be cleaned from
the garment of the world of Islam, and this is attainable.”
Resalat, a conservative Iranian daily, published
an editorial on October 22, 2006, titled
“Preparations for the Great War,” reflecting on
an Ahmadinejad speech two days earlier. “It must
not be forgotten that the great war is ahead of
us, perhaps tomorrow, or in a few months, or even
a few years,” the editorial read. “The nation of
Muslims must prepare for the great war, so as to
completely wipe out the Zionist regime, and remove this cancerous growth.”
One anti-regime blog stated: “In every Internet
site that I visit today (for example BBC or
Radio-Farda) or the satellite radio and
television news stations that I listen to, the
first news item is the pearls of wisdom issued by
Mr. Ahmadinejad regarding the countdown to the destruction of Israel.”
Another Persian-language blog critical of Israel
quoted Ahmadinejad and then asked its readers,
“What have we done to erase this Israel from the scene of time?”
In the Ham-Mihan Forum, a question was raised
about Ahmadinejad’s declaration that the
countdown toward Israel’s destruction had begun.
Among the seventy-one responses: “My opinion is
that first you [Ahmadinejad] should fix up your
own country, and then you can say that Israel
should be destroyed. The people in Iran don’t
have bread and we are concerned with Palestine.”
An Iranian newspaper editorial read: “The nation
of Muslims must prepare for the great war, so as
to completely wipe out the Zionist regime, and remove this cancerous growth.”
“I wish that all of this energy that is devoted
to the destruction of Israel would be directed
towards the destruction of drug addiction,
poverty, corruption, and prostitution.”
Bloggers at Imam Sadegh University called for a
boycott of Israeli products, with the following
message: “Dear bloggers: If you would like to do
so, you can take the first steps towards
obliterating Israel from the map of the world.”
Ahmadinejad’s statement at the “World without
Zionism” conference is widely quoted in blogs by
those supporting the statement, those critical of
the statement, and those who support the
statement but question the timing.
Persian-language bloggers all agree, however,
that “the Jerusalem-occupying regime must be
erased from the page of time” means the physical
destruction of the state of Israel.
Even before Ahmadinejad spoke about wiping Israel
off the map, the Iranian regime used such
expressions without leaving any doubt about what
they meant. A banner calling for Israel’s
elimination was draped across a Shahab-3 missile
during a 2003 military parade, for example. The
Iranian regime itself has clarified that such
expressions about Israel’s future do not describe
a long-term historical process, in which the
Israeli state collapses like the former Soviet
Union, but rather the actual annihilation of
Israel as a result of a military strike. The
Shahab- 3 missile has a range of eight hundred
miles or more and can reach Israel from Iranian territory.
Michael Axworthy, who served as the head of the
Iran section of Britain’s Foreign and
Commonwealth Office in 1998–2000, rejects the
notion that Ahmadinejad has been mistranslated
and misinterpreted: “The formula had been used
before by Khomeini and others, and had been
translated by representatives of the Iranian
regime as ‘wiped off the map.’ Some of the
dispute that has arisen over what exactly
Ahmadinejad meant by it has been rather bogus.
When the slogan appeared draped over missiles in
military parades, that meaning was pretty clear.”
THE THREATS START AT THE TOP
Iran’s highest political authority is Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who succeeded
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989. Khamenei has
made statements about Israel similar to
Ahmadinejad’s. In a televised sermon on December
15, 2000, he declared, “Iran’s position, which
was first expressed by the Imam [Khomeini] and
stated several times by those responsible, is
that the cancerous tumor called Israel must be uprooted from the region.”
“Dear bloggers: If you would like to do so, you
can take the first steps towards obliterating
Israel from the map of the world.”
A month later, on January 15, he stated: “It is
the mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to
erase Israel from the map of the region.” Hossein
Shariatmadari, a Khamenei confidant who serves as
one of his major mouthpieces, wrote an editorial
in the Iranian daily Kayhan on October 30, 2005,
in which he argued, “We declare explicitly that
we will not be satisfied with anything less than
the complete obliteration of the Zionist regime
from the political map of the world.”
Ayatollah Ahmad Janati, a member of Ahmadinejad’s
inner circle and chairman of the Guardian Council
of the Constitution, told reporters during a
celebration of the anniversary of the Islamic
revolution that every year the crowds are bigger
and the slogans more enthusiastic. He added, “The
blind enemies should see that the wish of these
people is the death of America and Israel.”
Mohammad-Ali Ramin refers to himself, as does the
press, as an adviser to Ahmadinejad. The
secretary of the political committee of the
Rayeheh Khosh-Khedmat Party, which supports the
president, he is a well-known Holocaust denier
and is believed to be behind the president’s
statements on that issue. On June 9, 2006,
according to the reformist Internet daily Rooz, Ramin told students in Rasht:
Among the Jews there have always been those who
killed God’s prophets and who opposed justice and
righteousness. Historically, there are many
accusations against the Jews. For example, it was
said that they were the source for such deadly
diseases as the plague and typhus. This is
because the Jews are very filthy people. For a
time, people also said that they poisoned wells
belonging to Christians and thus killed them.
Ramin does not even bother to cover up his
anti-Semitism by using “Zionists” instead of “Jews.”
Ayatollah Hussein Nuri Hamadani, a leading
religious authority associated with the regime,
told a meeting with the Mahdaviyat (messianic)
Studies Institute in April 2005, “One should
fight the Jews and vanquish them so that the
conditions for the advent of the Hidden Imam will be met.”
A CASE OF INCITEMENT
Finally, it is instructive to examine the view of
the Shiite militia Hezbollah toward Israel for an
indication of Iranian intentions. Hezbollah was
founded in 1982 with the deployment of Iranian
Islamic Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon’s Beqaa
Valley and the training of its first cadre; its
first governing council was established by the
Iranian ambassador to Damascus, Ali Akbar
Mohtashemi. In its founding political platform,
Hezbollah is clear that it takes its orders from
Tehran: “We abide by the orders of one single
wise and just leadership . . . personified by Khomeini.”
Take note of the statement of Hassan Nasrallah,
the secretary-general of Hezbollah. In 2002, he
disclosed his own organization’s genocidal intent when he declared:
Islamic prophecies and not only Jewish prophecies
declare that this state [Israel] will come into
being, and all the Jews of the world will gather
from all corners of the world in occupied
Palestine. But this will not be so their false
messiah [al-Dajjal] can rule in the world, but so
that God can save you the trouble of running them
down all over the world. And then the battle will be decisive and crushing.
The statements of Iran’s proxies and its leaders,
particularly President Ahmadinejad, leave no
doubt. They constitute incitement to genocide of
the people of Israel. They are alarmingly similar
to the coded statements of incitement that
preceded the Rwandan genocide of the Tutsis in
1994 and should therefore alarm all peace-loving people.
There is ample legal basis to prosecute
Ahmadinejad in the International Court of Justice
and the International Criminal Court for direct
and public incitement to commit genocide and crimes against humanity.
Special to the Hoover Digest. This article is
adapted from a longer, fully referenced version
available from the Jerusalem Center for Public
Affairs
(<http://jcpa.org/text/ahmadinejad2-words.pdf>http://jcpa.org/text/ahmadinejad2-words.pdf).
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